Transistors are the basic building block of electronic devices. The power of a transistor depends, in large part, on its switching speed and its power requirements. Faster switching transistors offer improved performance. Transistors having lower power requirements offer energy conservation and reduced heating. The latter effects are especially important in devices which rely upon self contained power sources.
The power required to switch a transistor is a function of the amount of current necessary to cause device operation. Much research has been conducted in an effort to reduce the amount of current. The end goal is a device in which operation is caused by a single electron. In single electronics (single electron technology), device operation is based on the concept of one carrier for one bit of information. That is, it is based on one-by-one manipulation of electrons through a small sub-structure, and specifically a transistor.
American researchers first made a transistor that relies on a single electron about fifteen years ago, employing techniques used to make advanced semiconductor chips. They also built a single electron device in which a semiconductor substrate is coated with a thin layer of an insulating material and sprayed minute blobs of indium onto it. They then positioned the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope over it. By manipulating the voltages applied to the tip and the substrate, the researchers controlled the movement of single electrons in and out of the blob. A challenging problem for room temperature operation of such devices is that of thermal fluctuations.
So far, reasonably long range quantum effects on transport properties have been mostly observed near liquid helium/liquid nitrogen temperatures. An important step in the practical development of the single electron devices is therefore the ability to produce operation at higher temperatures, e.g., room temperatures. Thus, there is a need for an improved device in which operation of the device is controlled by the flow of an electron. It is an object of the invention to provide such an improved device, in the form of a silicon nanoparticle field effect transistor.